Lifestyles of the Rich and Clueless

Nick Pell at the Black Sun Gazette responds to Alexa Von Tobel’s article urging people to go a day without spending:

I don’t like what the ruling class of this country do. They lead oppressive, imperialist wars while driving down the living standards of an increasingly disenfranchised working class.

However, nothing quite gets my goat like the nouveau riche elements that make up the upper middle class. If you’ve ever heard me talk about it, or are just curious why anytime a well-to-do celeb chimes in on some topic they’ve gleaned illumination from atop their penthouse apartment it makes me rage hard, this recent article at HuffPo will explain it.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll retch on your shoes when you read the first three sentences.

What would be it like to go a day without spending any money? I’ve thought about this before but I’ve never considered actually trying it. I couldn’t imagine going a day without spending a single penny — is that even possible?

People actually go entire 24-hour periods without spending money? As someone who has lived most of his life below the poverty line, this is a strange concept to me. Assuming I wanted to do this how would I get food delivered to my house? How would I pay for my cab to work? What would I tip the doorman with as I sashay into my apartment?

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But it is the spending money when you don't need to spend money phenomenon that has created our economy. If I actually go home and fix my meals instead of trusting hormone-crazed teenagers to cook it for me at Jack in the Box…well, the terrorists win, don't they?

5by5

Or…. you could look at it like you were more consciously DIRECTING where your money went.

Namely to something like sustainable local agriculture and the organic farmers who produced the ingredients for your home-cooked meal, as opposed to the giant mega-chain that trucks environmentally wasteful products halfway across the country to produce food that is making America fat thereby costing our health system even more money while only the precious few at the top of said mega-corp make any money, because they pay that Jack in the Shack employee a slave wage, rather than a livable wage so that he too can contribute to the economy.

justagirl

i, for one, live from check to check. i like to see how close i can get to $0 in my account without going under. my record is 11¢ and haven't bounced a check in years.

nemoide

Geeze, the author of the Huffington Post article seriously bothers me too. And I come from a decently well-off family!

Also it's probably worth noting that I'm not sure eating food you bought on a previous day really counts as not paying for it…

emperorreagan

Sort of like how buying green energy offsets doesn't really change the fact that some people's mansions consume as much energy as a small town?